Joe McNamee celebrates the modern dinner party

Is the formal dinner party dead? Joe McNamee says it isn’t always easy to create the right mood as he knows from personal experience.

AS YOUNG students in the ‘80s a friend and I passed many an impoverished night up in his attic eyrie, dolefully strumming guitars while his parents hosted a dinner party, the smoke from our miserly ‘rollies’ encountering roiling cloudbanks of perfume from downstairs, a symphony of chinking glasses, clattering plates and hooting laughter eventually culminating in a grand crescendo as they’d gather around the piano to bellow out show tunes.

Despite the multiple generational differences, we had to bow to their Cain-raising abilities, they certainly knew how to throw a shindig. With his parents away for a weekend, we decided to host a dinner party of our own. It was an unmitigated disaster. Ten of us, good friends, a close-knit gang, sat around the big dining table, tongue-tied, mortified, socially paralysed from the neck up, the night only barely redeemed when we hightailed it off to the pub. It would be some time before I could fathom the reasons for this unmitigated disaster and understand that a dinner party involved more than assembling ‘guests’ around a table and hoping ‘dinner’ would become a ‘party’.

That first ill-fated experience dated from an era when the dinner party was often scorned as a penitential and reoccurring rite of passage, the price paid for trading pipe dreams, whatever they were, for suburbia. It was all about gin-hammered desk jockeys throwing up the Coq au Vin behind the sofa while bored, squiffy housewives, made clumsy passes ‘til voices were raised and tears flowed as freely as the Blue Nun. Or at least that’s how the sitcoms would have it.

More accurately, the heyday of the dinner party coincided with an overall rise in incomes and living standards and the birth of a new secular faith known as ‘Interior Design’. And if you’ve dropped a bundle on dickying up the dining room, you’ll be wanting to show it off and no better way of doing so than inviting friends and neighbours to dinner.

I have never once encountered a host who willingly risked disaster by inviting a boss or business associate with the intention of wooing them into divvying out a promotion or favourable deal, but for an earlier generation it was a different story.

“People did it all the time,” says ‘Mary’, 70. “We entertained numerous clients of my husband’s. Some were nice and became friends and some of them you hadn’t much in common with and it was a bit of a struggle. I had a gang of small kids at the time and the house would be in turmoil and had to be cleaned from top to bottom. Then you’d have to get out and clean all the good china, the Waterford crystal and the silver cutlery. You’d be putting flowers everywhere and the bathroom had to get a very good clean — everyone was putting on a show and you’d hope they wouldn’t look into any of the bedrooms. I certainly wouldn’t have the energy for it now.

“There wouldn’t be fierce competition about the cooking between most of the wives but you’d keep an eye out to what was happening. If I saw someone doing what seemed like an easy dinner worth copying, I had no problem doing so. I did try a few fancy recipes that turned out disastrous, but after a while you copped yourself on and didn’t try anything fancy. The way young people do it now is so much more casual and so much more enjoyable.”

Even when the food was sublime, the company splendid, dinner parties were still seen as ineffably square. But it seems we are now in an era when the dinner party, dare we say it, has become positively hip. No sooner had the New York Times, in 2012 decried the death of the dinner party, than other sources rushed to herald its revival courtesy of Brooklyn hipsters showcasing their cutting-edge culinary capabilities and sensibilities, bringing a new ‘authenticity’ to an age-old institution.

Actually, what the NYT writer, Guy Trebay, was bemoaning was the purported passing of a very particular type of dinner party, the New York dinner party, hosted by the High Society mavens, ‘the seated dinner, with its minuet of invitation and acceptance, its formalities and protocols, its culinary and dietary challenges, its inherent requirements of guest and host, alike’, wrote Trebay, deeming it the ‘epitome of civilised living.’ To be honest, treading such a social minefield is part of a bygone age that has seen the casual usurp the formal in most social situations, although a new generation takes great delight in parodying some of the more outré elements of the old school dinner party.

Some are even spotting the commercial potential in the intimacy of the home dining experience and hosting supper clubs for complete strangers: News of the Curd, on the top floor of an industrial building in Temple Bar, is a very cosy home to two very nice homegrown hipsters, self-taught chef Kevin Powell and his partner Robin Hoshino, who serve up three courses of always Irish, local, seasonal produce cooked with a fair degree of imagination for €25 a head.

But for every Powell there are scores of newly arrived, aspiring domestic cooks reared on Masterchef bringing a whole new level of trepidation to private dinner party dining. While it proves near impossible to find anyone to dish dirt for fear of offending friends and relatives, off-the-record anecdotes of culinary calumnies abound, with the male particularly culpable.

“Food has definitely become a trendy thing,” says ‘Barry’, 42, “and all my friends are into it. And now that we are all starting or have started young families, we don’t go out as much but go to each other’s houses for dinner. And some of the lads have become total wannabe Ramsays. They spend all Saturday spending a fortune shopping for expensive ingredients and then trash the kitchen turning out, I’m sorry, but totally shit food! What’s worse, is they think it’s brilliant. The only solution is to get so drunk, you’ll eat anything but a dinner party for me usually means stopping for chips on the way home.”

Joe McNamee’s dinner party tips

* ALWAYS ask about dietary requirements well in advance of the day and upon arrival, take time to greet guests and give them a drink and some nibbles even if palls of black smoke are billowing from the kitchen.

* Casual dining doesn’t mean you can’t make an effort with the setting; it’s amazing how 20 tealights in jam jars transform a suburban home into a glittering cavern, or a simple tablecloth can transform a battered old table. Always have some upbeat tunes playing in the background to cover awkward silences.

* Good cooks should remember hosting responsibilities and not disappear into the kitchen. A pre-prepared starter and dessert to go, with a single pot-cooked main course, such as a casserole, served with a salad and good bread, allows you to sit with your guests. For this gathering, we ate a cold buffet — perfect summer fare! If you’re a self-confessed disaster, simply buy everything but buy thoughtfully, not just a few trays of microwave nibbles from Marks & Sparks. And remember, a good cheeseboard of fine Irish farmhouse cheeses served at room temperature with good crackers and fruit can rescue any dinner party.

* While nerve-wracking formal dining may be passé, a little ‘ceremony’ can be fun: fancy dress, cocktails, a special playlist reflecting a theme and a spot of dancing afterwards can make staying in every bit as good as going out.

* Cook to your level. A dinner party is not Masterchef; it is a great way to assemble friends and food should serve, not distract. Average cooks should pick a dish they do well, even if it isn’t fancy; good company and a nice wine more than compensates. You can also buy nice charcuterie as hors d’ouvres and a good cake and some cheese for dessert.

* The only line from the New York Times article (see main article) that rings true is: ‘the most important part of entertaining is being able to mix people.’ Don’t be afraid to invite new guests and split up old friends. The very best dinner parties are those where you meet new best friends.

* On the dating service, thing, I am agnostic, even atheist on using it to set up single friends, having been victim of same in the past but it equally can offer (sadistic!) pleasure to observers. Most of all, remember this is fun so enjoy it!